The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1887-10-14
Extinction of the Buffalo.
w. 7. HoRNADAY, IN THE OCT. CosNoPoLITAl

w. 7. HoRNADAY, IN THE OCT. CosMoPoLITAN:
The time was when buffalo hunter
would have scorned the idea of gather
ing up dry bones for living. Indeed,
it often happened that his royal high
ness would not even deign to skin the
buffalo that his own rifle brought down.
But, thanks to his own reckless i'm
providence, "Othello's occupations
gone" The buffalo are all dead, and
he must choose between pune hing cows
and picking up bones. TO this extent,
the slain buffalo is his own avenger.
At various points along the line of the
Northern Pacific Railway westward
from jamestown, Dakota, buffalo bones
lay piled in great heaps besides the
track, waiting for shipment. They are
the only monuments that remain to
the American bison, which, to quote
the great original observation of every
tenderfoot, "once roamed in vast herds
over these boundless prairies." In a
short time, even the bones will all be
gathered up, and nothing whatever re-
main to mark the presence upon this
earth of eight million bison at one time
save what can be found III the mu-
seums, the geological gardens, or the
tertiary deposits of the earth itself.
Could any war of determination be
more complete or far reaching in its re-
suits!
From the Red Buttes onward you
see where the millions have gone. This
was once famous buffalo range, and
now the bleaching skeletons lie scat
tered thlckly all along the trail. Like
ghastly monuments of slaughter, these
ugly excresences stand out in bold re-
lief on, the smooth, hard surface of the
prairie, from the huge bull skeletons,
lying close beside the wagon trail to
those far back in the bad lands, where
they are merely dark specks in the dis
tance- They lie to day precisely as
they fell four years ago, except that the
flesh is no longer upon them. The
head stretches far forward, as if for its
last gasp, and the legs lie helplessly
upon the turf with precisely the same
curves as when they moved for the last
time.
Now and then you come to place
where the hunter got Il "stand" on a
'bunch," and from his hiding place in
the head of gully or amongst the
rocks fired leisurely with his 40-12O
Sharp's rifle, at the rate Of shot every
two or three minutes until every buffa-
10 of the bunch had fallen. Here You
can count seventeen skeletons on lit
tie more than an acre, and near by are
fourteen more that evidently fell at the
same time. The powerful effect of the
strong parching winds and the intense
dry heat of summer has literally strip
ped the flesh from the bones, but the
skeletons lie precisely as they fell. The
bones are still held together by few
dried-up ligaments, but are bleached as
white rs snow. Sometimes we found
immense skeletons that were absolutely
perfect, even to the tiny carpal and tar
sal bones, the size Of a hazel-nut. Ut
these dry skeletons, we selected eight
of the finest and largest, and they are
now cached in the storage rooms of the
National Museum against the great
famine for bison that will soon set in.
Beyond the Red Butts, were were
seldom out of sight Of bleaching skele-
tons, and often forty or fifty were in
sight at one time. The skinners always
left the heads of the bulls unskinned,
and the thick hide has dried down upon
the skulls harder than the bone itself,
holding the tangled masses of the shag-
gy frontlet firmly in place until it
bleaches brown in the sunshine and is
finally worn away by the wind and
weather. Many Of these heads are so
perfectly preserved, and with their thick
masses of wavy brown hair are so fresh
looking, that the slaughter of the mil
lions is brought right down to the pre-
sent, and seems to have been the work
of Yesterday We can endure the sight
of the bones reasonably well, for We ex-
pect it; but these great hairy heads
make us feel our loss most keenly. At
first it is impossible to look at one
without a sigh, and each group of skel-
etons brings back the old thought.
"What pity"